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April 24, 2012

Wildroses Wilt in the Spring

Roses can get damaged in the early spring; that's what seems to have happened in Alberta, where an early lead in the polls of their Tea Party-esque Wildrose Alliance party withered, as the ruling Progressive Conservatives got their 12th straight win going back to 1971, getting 61 of the 87 seats reporting as I go to press with a 44% share of the vote. Wildrose did well, pulling in 35% of the votes and getting 19 seats. The left got what Paddy shot at, as the NDP and Liberals combined to get 7 seats and 20% of the vote.

With that winning streak, the Tories seem more like the PRI than the PC. They also wind up becoming a center-left party, since they have more voters to their right than to their left. Granted, the center of gravity in Alberta is right-of-center, but when only 20% of the vote is to their left, there are quite a few folks who would be Liberal voters on a national level that vote PC locally.

This will have some interesting effects on the federal Conservatives, for their Alberta delegation will have both PC and Wildrose backers. Canadian politics does have some disconnects, as provincial parties often don't look much like their federal brethren; BC provincial Liberals include quite a few federal Tories while a former NDP BC premier slid seamlessly into the federal Liberals when he went national. Another example is Newfoundland's PC government, who is all but at war with the Ottawa Conservatives.